If you are looking for a way to get an environmental, social, and economic return on your investment, look at ECO360 Trust – the trust campaign of the Institute for Sustainable Communication (ISC). As a non-profit organization, ISC has the lofty goal of “…training the next generation of communication and media leaders required to create green jobs, foster environmental restoration and improve quality of life in the communities they touch.”
I recently spoke with Mark Elis, the Director of Development for ECO360, who was extremely enthusiastic about the history, mission and projects his organization has undertaken. Mark explained that ECO360 is, at its core, a fundraising program that uses the t-shirt as a tool for sustainable communication, and he feels that “the t-shirt is a social medium even in the age of Facebook.” The new twist is that ECO360 is using the revenue generated by the sale of the t-shirts to fund scholarships. The current goal at ECO360 is to provide scholarships (generally between $500 and $1,500) that “…help college students put sustainability principles into practice and learn through experience.”
A detailed description of the t-shirt manufacture and use is on the ECO360 website, and an amusing student-made video of how to turn plastic bottles into t-shirts is a must-see. Here are just a few of the highlights Mark described to me that make the ECO360 t-shirt so special:
· T-Shirts are made in US factories that pay a living wage
· Each shirt is made from 100% recycled PET plastic
· There is no water used in dyeing or printing
· They are great as athletic apparel because they are breathable
· The entire shirt can be printed as a wrap which means more space for the message and less waste
ECO360 has clients worldwide, including government authorities and private industry with locations in California. The t-shirts have been used to deploy messages as part of some very high visibility campaigns, including the United Nations Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen in December 2009 . The ECO360 campaign t-shirt designs for Blue Planet Network, whose mission “is to empower people of the world with health, education and prosperity through safe drinking water,” use vivid graphics to highlight their message.
To listen to Mark describe ECO360 is to hear someone with passion about a feel-good product in a do-good organization. All of us have t-shirts in our closets, and my guess is that most of them have some kind of message or graphic that says a little about who we are. The funds raised by the t-shirts ECO360 creates say a lot about what we want for our future by putting our money where our mouth is.
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